I'm trying to run VectorLinux SOHO 5.8 on a Toshiba Satellite 2100CDS, AMD K6-2 400MHZ with 260MB RAM. Everything seems to go good during the install, looks fantastic on startup, and this is the only "light" install that activates my PCMCIA port and detects my network card. What does run is nice and quick... and I don't want to have to install Windows 95 on it, however... while the desktop is starting up, I get at least 5, sometimes more errors. I couldn't tell you what module because they are obscured by the splash screen and I have to clear them to boot. Once the desktop does come up, the network configuration app gives me the hourglass but never actually runs, there is no network connectivity, and anything involving the organizer or the KONQUER (sp?) file browser causes the same Signal 4 error that occurs all over the place on startup. Any clues? It seems so close, but it's completely not usable. Open Office works though. Please help!

It is also possible that some of the crashes may not be related to KDE but may be caused by other things. This is also the first that I'm hearing of signal 4 errors with Konqueror as a file browser. I wouldn't be surprised about occasional signal 11 errors, but signal 4 is unusual. The next time you see it happen, click on the "Get Backtrace" button if you see the KDE Crash Handler dialog and post that output here.

Here you go - looks like I only have 5.1 and not 5.8 like I was thinking, but it is SOHO. I've discovered pretty much anything I click on in KDE - wifi manager, Konqueror - everything generates errors. Output of /cat/etc/vector-versionVector Linux 5.1

I'm frankly stumped by this... I never have had a signal 4 error with KDE at all. Did you, by chance, do any upgrades using either slapt-get or gslapt after installing VL 5.1 SOHO? Just curious, that's all.

Nope... no upgrades. Virgin install on freshly fdisked HD. Got the regular iso image off the download page, verified files... Any one think it might have something to do with the file system? I haven't done Reiser yet. That's about the only thing that I haven't tried tweaking. Fresh install every time, same results. Windows 95 and XP work fine but XP is too slow and 95... I'd rather use LINUX. So far Vector is the only dist (and I've lost track) that sees the network card and doesn't crawl, even sets it up as eth0 I just can't get in to configure stuff (and KDE flat out doesn't work). I'm stumped too. :-(

As an addendum... I tried SOHO 5.8 latest release candidate and that wouldn't even install. It goes half way and then powers off the laptop suddenly. I have tried many other LINUX installs and apart from not detecting the network card, haven't had any problems with any other flavor or desktop manager, including KDE on other dists. VERY confusing...

1) double check md5sum of ISO, burn to a better quality media at low speed2) double check your laptop's BIOS settings. You might want to reun "Reset to Default" in your BIOS in case there is something weird going on3) double check your partitioning process (use fdisk -l) to see partitions are large enough, etc.3) re-install system using ReiserFS (I have never had any probs with Reiser on over 50 boxes with VL). 4) if install problems try and get back to root prompt and look at "dmesg" for possible hardware problems.

Personally I suspect hardware issues rather than a VL OS problem, but I could be wrong. You might wanna burn a copy of UBCD (Ultimate Boot CD) and run memtest and the hard drive diagnostics.

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"As people become more intelligent they care less for preachers and more for teachers". Robert G. Ingersoll

Thanks for the advice... had a while where I couldn't mess with it but here are the results:1) It passed once, failed another, so I downloaded from another site, burned slow and everything passed.2) Nothing unusual... disabled PnP OS and set everything else back to basics3) Totally nuked the drive and started over from scratch just to be sure3) Did that4) Same result. I checked "dmesg" and it didn't see any problems. Also passed all the tests I could find on the UBCD.This last install the audo-detect had been selecting an invalide refresh rate for the screen and crashing, so I loaded it in VESA mode and there were no crashes. But still, nothing would run. Puppy Linux installs without a hitch and works great but the PCMCIA slot doesn't detect and I got burned out trying wrappers. Vector finds the PCMCIA slot and everything, but won't work. I guess I'm going to have to go Puppy or Windows 95, but I sure would like to use Vector. I'll start here on any other laptops I happen into for sure. Any other ideas?

Nothing technical and maybe not what you want to hear, but can you live without KDE? If so, try one of the VL versions with XFCE instead and see if it works. Personally I prefer the ligthweight XFCE desktop on 5.8 Gold. You can still run Open Office etc without KDE. Apologies if I'm stating the obvious!

I agree with Andy Price - that machine is borderline for running KDE as you only have 256MB of RAM. You WILL be using swap so your applications will load very slowly. I think you would have a much snappier system using VL 5.8 Standard using the xfce desktop environment.

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"As people become more intelligent they care less for preachers and more for teachers". Robert G. Ingersoll

I agree with Andy Price - that machine is borderline for running KDE as you only have 256MB of RAM. You WILL be using swap so your applications will load very slowly. I think you would have a much snappier system using VL 5.8 Standard using the xfce desktop environment.

Ironically. Konqueror would make sense as a choice of browser, though. If you don't feel strongly about having the source available (I do often read it, so that doesn't include me), there's also Opera.